


Especially Pretty Men

by BlackHolesandUnicorns



Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: (Because your boyfriend killed everybody you ever loved oops), Bad Sex, Bad Sex That Turns Good, Cyrus just wants dick, Flashbacks, Good Sex, Good Sex That Was Bad In Retrospect, Grieving, M/M, Making Peace with the Past, Olberic is tormented
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 10:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20833844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackHolesandUnicorns/pseuds/BlackHolesandUnicorns
Summary: Olberic Eisenberg has kept his demons on such a short leash for so long, he has no idea how to handle them when they're turned loose. A tryst with the scholar he's traveling with while he hunts them seems like it might be a good way to work through all that haunts him.Or maybe not.(or: two bottoms and no top! a tale of redemption)





	Especially Pretty Men

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted sept 2018. new account, same author. my perception of olberic&cyrus as a couple has changed a lot since then. (like uhm they're in love and married and amazing together.) but i stand by this and also loved writing it. enjoy, whether you're rereading or here for the first time.

  


Late nights spent brooding in taverns had become a monument to the state of his life.

During his years as a knight of Hornburg, Olberic Eisenberg had avoided drink, sloth, and other forms of excess. His mind, body, and duty had all been sworn to something beyond him, something that transcended the short term gains that such vices may have provided. He would not squander those gifts he had devoted to his liege and his kingdom. An early, sober night would prepare him to rise at daybreak and dedicate another day to his oath of service.

Then Hornburg was gone, and he’d found himself in Cobbleston, with its simple people so desperately in need of someone to watch over them: a protector, a champion, a strong, steady fixture. In a town like that, where everyone knew everyone else and there were no secrets, Berg the hedge knight couldn’t have expected to drown hidden sorrows at the local bar without destroying the very idea they so desperately needed.

He had never considered himself the sort of man who lingered over tankards of ale, who found himself alone in an empty taproom past midnight, who handled his own sorrows with anything but a calm but firm denial.

That had all ended when he’d caught the scent of Erhardt, when he’d lost the ability to simply keep running from all that had happened between them. A sticky bar and an overfull flagon seemed the only remedy to that particular disease.

At least he didn’t find himself alone.

He’d found value of a sort in each of his drinking companions. The flinty resolve of the dancer, the quiet respect of the huntress, the boisterous laughter of the healer, the resolute faith of the Flamebearer… even the young merchant girl and the permanently scowling thief had proven themselves of a good sort, possessed of hidden depths and inspiring character.

But it was the scholar who he found himself hoping would join him in his ill-considered plummet the most often.

He’d never had much use for academics, and in truth, Albright frequently reminded him of why. He’d always found them condescending and smug, and it seemed that they could dither for hours about that which was of no meaning or interest to anyone outside of their specific, narrow discipline. In short, he’d found the scholastic set that most loathsome of things, men of a great many words and little to no action.

And perhaps that was why he felt differently about this specific one.

Albright was an aloof, flighty sort of prig. But he was not an idle one. When in his cups, Olberic would listen with interest as he spoke with distaste for the ivory towers of academia, the closed doors and weighty locks, the disconnection from the common man, as he rhapsodized over the thought of education and learning being available to all, and as his eyes fairly glowed as he detailed his deductions on the affair that had currently brought a prestigious academic like himself to drink watered down mead in a tiny Sunshade bar.

Without a doubt, Albright had one foot firmly up his own arse. But the other was down on the ground, and Olberic liked that about him, liked it very much. It was a rare thing, to meet a man of learning who had interests and passions and thoughts beyond those strictly concerned with his own advancement. Who seemed, in fact, entirely unconcerned with such things. Who could hold a half-decent conversation and an impressive amount of liquor, besides.

And gods help him, but the man was damnably pretty.

Olberic Eisenberg had always had an especial weakness to pretty.

*

His muscles ached and his blood sang as he hefted his wooden practice sword to block a wild blow. The clattering of the two blades striking rang loud in his ears. Impact shock travelled up to his shoulder, but his grip held and his attacker fell back, crouched and circling, awaiting another opening.

He gritted his teeth and bared them in a challenging smile.

“You thought you had me there, eh, Erhardt?” He threw up his shield arm and shifted to a more defensive stance.

“Never,” his opponent called back, flashing teeth as damned white as Flamesgrace snow. “Only a fool would ever count the Unbending Blade beaten until he was flat on his arse.”

Something about the word, about the tone… it sent a lick of flame through Olberic’s middle. Which could not have been unintentional; Erhardt always knew exactly what he was doing. Stay focused, he reminded himself, eyes trained on his opponent’s habitual tells. Eyes, wrists, hips, thighs…

There, an opening.

Erhardt came in at his left, sword held in a two-handed grip, and Olberic met the attack with his shield, already stepping right for his own attack. His teeth all knocked together from the force of the blow, but if he put everything he had into one blow, it would be easy enough to –

Ah, or so it wouldn’t.

Clever bastard, Erhardt had seen two steps ahead. He seemed to flow away from the attack like water, and the moment he left Olberic’s field of vision, he knew it was over. It was pride more than any remaining hope of winning that had him twist about, throwing up shield and sword both in an attempt to block what he knew was coming.

Erhardt’s boot caught him halfway between arse and thigh and he went sprawling into the sawdust, shield caught beneath his arm. Sword still in hand. He raised it blindly, shaking loose hair from his eyes, scrambling to leverage himself back up, and –

The dull tip of a wooden blade hovered above his throat.

Ah, well. He’d seen it coming.

He threw his sword away and pulled his other arm from beneath him. A cloud of sawdust rose; he grimaced back a sneeze.

“I have you at odds, sir,” Erhardt said, his full lips curving into a playful smile.

“So you do.” Olberic raised his hands meekly. “And I yield.”

Erhardt chuckled from somewhere in his broad chest, deep and sweet. He stepped back, wooden blade falling to his side. “Ah, you make it too easy, sometimes. Make a man work for it, won’t you, Olberic? No one likes an easy yield.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Help me up, won’t you?”

He didn’t need the help. He could have gotten to his feet without even using his own hands and not even be winded, and both of them knew it. But Erhardt didn’t mention it, merely offered a hand swathed in cracked leather, which Olberic gladly took. He hauled him to his feet.

“Another bout, then?” Erhardt asked, stepping back and swinging his sword experimentally. “We’re three and four, as I’m sure you know. What say we give you a chance to even things out?”

But though no natural light made its way into the arena, Olberic felt the shadows lengthening and the moon rising beyond its walls. They’d been the last two here for an hour or more, now. Regretfully, he shook his head. “It’s an early morning for me tomorrow, I’m afraid.” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to leave my honour in your hands.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

The quartermaster had already left for the day, leaving them in charge of their own equipment. The abandoned shed was small and the two lanterns high on the walls shed only dim light over the proceedings. They worked in silence, removing leather gauntlets and padded jerkins in the cramped confines, carefully placing each item in its correct location. The quartermaster was a tyrant and she’d skin them alive if a single baldric were out of place.

Olberic had only just begun to wonder if he were imagining the heat of their mingled exhalations, the harmony of their calming heartbeats, the cadences of their quiet breathing when Erhardt came up behind him, wrapping an arm about his middle. Pulling him close.

“Early morning?” he inquired, his voice low and suggestive. His fingers, long and clever, the hands of a musician rather than a swordsman, teased the leather of Olberic’s belt.

“I said as much, didn’t I?” Olberic murmured, leaning his head back.

“How early?” Slowly, almost leisurely, Erhardt pulled at the belt, leather slithering through the metal buckle. The sound whispered around them.

Olberic drew in a shuddering breath, spinning about. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, losing patience in the game. Flirtation had never been his strong suit. He didn’t have the capacity. “Come back to my bunk.”

But Erhardt had long been on the other end of that spectrum, possessed of an almost supernatural restraint that Olberic had to believe was motivated at least in part by a desire to see him, personally, squirm. “Olberic, please. I don’t want to be the reason for poor performance in your duties. How could I live with myself? I’ll have to decline your invitation.”

His busy fingers belied his words, tossing aside belt and starting on laces. His fingers brushed Olberic’s length within his trousers, and a wave of heat flowed through him.

Olberic growled, pushing his hands away. “Then I’ll thank you not to tease,” he chided, and winced at how breathless and desperate and sullen he sounded.

Erhardt’s face split into a wide grin at the words. He took a step forward, and without thinking, Olberic stepped back.

“I’d never,” he said, reaching up to pull out the ribbon gathering his hair back into a tail. Golden locks spilled over his shoulders. He tugged at the laces of his own loose white shirt, and it fell open. “You know I always deliver, Olberic.”

Olberic’s thighs bumped against the bench built into the wall behind them.

Erhardt’s fingers pulled open his trousers. They slipped inside. Found what they were looking for.

Olberic swallowed hard, his eyes slipping closed.

“Step closer to me,” Erhardt commanded, barely above a whisper, and Olberic obeyed, pressing their hips so close together he could feel the other man’s heartbeat in his cock. With one hand still hard at work between them, Erhardt pulled at his trousers until they fell down around his ankles. Without needing to be told, Olberic stepped out of them. His mouth pressed against Erhardt’s ear. He panted harder than he had in the ring.

“The quartermaster will damned well kill us if she finds out about this little indiscretion,” he breathed, his breath falling into the rhythm of Erhardt’s long, even strokes, his eyes squeezing tightly shut. “We tempt fate.”

“Then leave,” Erhardt murmured, hand sliding off his aching cock to grasp his hips. “Or get up on that bench.”

An easy enough decision, that.

With his arse half-balanced on the quartermaster’s carefully maintained countertop, Olberic wrapped his his legs around Erhardt’s trim waist and his arms around his neck. He groaned deep in his chest when Erhardt guided himself to his entrance, when he hauled him closer, when he began to drive up into him with long, deliberate thrusts. Olberic buried his hands and his nose into thick golden hair, smelling of harsh lye soap and sweet male sweat.

“Three and five,” Erhardt gasped. “And your honour in worse condition than ever.”

“Erhardt,” Olberic gasped, voice hoarse and breathless. “Erhardt.”

Erhardt chuckled against his throat, teeth gliding over his adam’s apple, calloused hand palming his cock. “Ah, Olberic,” he said, a delightful growl that made both their chests vibrate. “Still so easy. Didn’t I tell you? You really have to learn to make me work.”

*

“So you truly mean to tell me,” Albright said, leaning back in his chair with his flagon cradled in two hands, “that you never knew _any_ practitioners of magic who had particularly impressive skills or knowledge?”

Olberic took a drink from his own mug, studying the scholar intently. “I’m afraid to disappoint you, but no,” he replied after a moment. “In fact, my encounters with dedicated magic-users were few and far between, except for the priests of the Holy Flame. I’ve met more of your ilk since… leaving Hornburg than I ever did in her borders.”

_Leaving_ seemed the right word, neutral enough that it didn’t compel him to drink deeper and then excuse himself off to bed.

“Fascinating. That is perfectly _out_ of sync with everything I understand about your homeland!” Albright said, shaking his head firmly. “All the advanced treatises on arcane subjects are written in High Hornburgian, with the very runic language of magic _itself_ an offshoot of the alphabet. Hornburg was also reported to spread worship wider throughout the pantheon than most nations, which granted magicks the followers of the only Flame could merely dream of. Why, it’s widely accepted that the very _soil_ of Hornburg is imbued with powerful energies.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Olberic said.

“Unbelievable. And yet, deeply exciting! This throws all manner of doubt on matters of complete academic consensus!”

Olberic hid his smile in his cups. When on earth had he come to find this sort of behavior charming? It was the man’s pretty face. Coming from a fellow possessed of such remarkable good looks, all manner of chatter might seem a treat.

“What an invaluable scholastic resource you are proving to be, sir! I don’t suppose you would suffer to be interviewed once I have the time to fully dedicate to the pursuit? I won’t take offense if you’re adverse to prying questions, of course, but –“

“I’m not,” Olberic said, setting down his flagon. Except that he was, of course, and always had been. He’d started out a quiet boy, grown into a sullen youth, and finally turned out as a private sort of man. No time or patience for curious strangers.

Perhaps that was the key word, stranger. If he were honest, he didn’t think he considered any of his fellow travelers any such thing, especially Cyrus Albright.

“Ask away,” he said.

“Oh,” Albright said, blinking. He sat up straighter, sliding his own cup onto the sticky wooden table. “Ah, all right, then. I wasn’t expecting… well, but of course, let’s have at it! Start with the absolute basics, I say. Establish a baseline. You say you lived in Hornburg all your life?”

“It was the only home I ever knew,” Olberic replied.

“I see.” Albright nodded, seeming to take down notes with empty hands and nothing but a surprisingly focused gaze. “Your parents –“

“None that I remember,” Olberic said.

“Of course. And... you would have been in your late twenties when the fall happened, yes?”

He nodded. “Twenty-seven.”

Albright straightened the laces on his sleeves. It had the rhythm of an old habit, a grounding sort of ritual. “Then was there, and forgive me the delicate question, Sir Olberic, anyone you, ah… lost, in the tragic event?”

Blood in his mouth, dripping from his forehead. Pain in his side like he’d been gutted twice over. Bodies all around him. He’d scanned them all for golden hair and a pretty face, heart in his throat. Erhardt, he’d called in a panic. Where is Erhardt?

Fool that he was.

Albright must have seen something on his face, and he held up both hands in a soothing gesture. “Of course, a delicate subject. I understand. I only thought, with your age and position at the time, there might have been a Dame Eisenberg, perhaps?”

When he’d seen him from behind, straight-backed and unharmed, for a moment he’d almost lost his composure. Dropped his sword, burst into tears. Thank all the gods, you’re all right. The words had frozen to his tongue when he’d seen blood dripping from his lover’s sword.

“I apologize,” Albright said, his voice seeming quite far away. “My eagerness gets the better of me. An old colleague always cautioned me to draw thicker lines between intellectual curiosity and mere intrusiveness, and while she is quite right, I’ve long struggled to see the difference between the two.”

“No wife,” Olberic said, looking up, pushing away golden ghosts and the pressure in his chest. “No children. I was what they would call a ‘confirmed bachelor,’ I believe is the term.”

“Oh,” Albright said, and he seemed momentarily shocked into silence. He blinked rapidly, and when his bright eyes focused on Olberic again, their quality of study had most definitely shifted. “Yes, I… I actually am quite acquainted with the concept. Intimately, if you understand my meaning.”

He understood his meaning.

And perhaps if this impromptu interview hadn’t conjured up that spectre of scarlet and gold, he would have handled it in the same way he’d handled every man who’d given him that look in the decade since Hornburg had fallen. With a tight smile and a murmured rebuff and a good, healthy distance henceforth.

Or perhaps not. Because ever since he’d left Cobbleston, the Blazing Blade had never been far, and Cyrus Albright was simply too pretty to deny.

Which is how they wound up in the man’s rented room, lips finding one another in the dark. Albright tasted of mead and tobacco and peppermint, and it was not an unpleasant combination. He found his face in the dark, cradling his chin with both hands. Smooth skin, with only a hint of whispered roughness where he’d shave. The kiss was fumbling, but it was good.

Olberic had drank too much to be entirely clear-headed, but despite imbibing the same amount, Cyrus seemed quite sober as he pulled away to throw aside the curtains and let in brilliant moonlight. Olberic made a soundless murmur of approval, stepping closer again. He wanted the light to see by when he was with a man as gorgeous as this one.

Their lips met again, more urgently this time, and Olberic’s clumsy hands found and pulled the clasp on Cyrus’s cloak; it fell into a silken pool around their feet. Cyrus fumbled with his sword belt. Olberic pulled at his ascot.

Their tongues met. Olberic groaned, finding maddeningly tiny buttons running down Cyrus’s waistcoat. His patience lasted only moments before he began to pull at them irritably, desperate for bare skin to run his fingertips along. It had been near ten years since he’d been with anyone. He’d grown used to the drought, even allowed himself to languish tragically in its clutches like a mooning poet, and it was as if every lonely night had come calling at once, driving him to frenzy.

Cyrus pulled away, laughing breathlessly. “Excuse me, I’ll have none of that, now,” he gasped. He sounded pleasingly breathless. “This garment cost me a fortune and having it mended with raise questions, don’t you think?” 

The chiding tone made him sway on his feet. Ah, Olberic, Erhardt’s voice seemed to whisper through the air.

Cyrus laid aside his waistcoat, and Olberic had him half out of his silk shirt only seconds after.

Bare skin felt amazing. Beyond belief. He groaned, gasped. Albright had a fine dusting on his chest and coarser hair lower, a tempting trail leading down into his hose, and despite his academic background, he lacked nothing in form. Olberic ran sensitized fingertips over planes and angles, savouring the feeling even as his own clothing was divested. He’d never been with a man with such unblemished skin, free of criss-crossing scars or rough burns.

He could have drawn a map of Erhardt’s scars.

Cyrus coaxed him backwards and he obeyed the directions until he fell into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Cyrus slid into his lap, pushing off his loose shirt, fingers gliding along his bare skin, tracing the bulges of muscle he found. Olberic groaned his pleasure. It had been an age since anyone touched him, and in this position, he could feel the hard length of Albright’s cock pressed against his abdomen, held captive by his tight hose.

It was a damned heady thing, to feel wanted like this again.

He dragged his mouth over Albright’s neck and throat, leaving wet trails. The other man squirmed down against him, against his straining cock, making him growl first with pleasure and then with frustration.

“Albright,” he gasped against his ear, swallowing hard. “It’s been a damned long time. If you don’t get to work soon –“

“Ah, right. My apologies.”

Cyrus slid back, his fingers flying to the laces of Olberic’s trousers. He watched with his lips parted and his entire body flushed as the scholar tugged them loose, pulling apart the mouth of his pants, baring his cock to the cool night air.

Olberic cried out faintly.

Cyrus’s eyes went wide. His gaze locked most flatteringly with Olberic’s bared prick, his chest heaving for a moment. “Oh my,” he murmured, the air vibrating with his voice. Olberic could swear he felt it resonating in his cock. “I’ve never before seen such… such undeniable empirical evidence that especially large men are especially large in all respects.”

Olberic’s cheeks burned in the exact way he liked. He looked roughly away, swallowing. “Enough with that, now. Get yours out and we’ll see this through.”

“Oh, no need, sir.” Cyrus pressed a kiss against the rough skin of his jawline before sliding off his lap and onto the floor before him. “It’d be positively abhorrent to allow any distractions from _this_ unbending blade.”

Ah.

Well, he supposed it was partially his fault for not making his preferences clear an hour ago.

It was far too late to correct the misunderstanding, and he’d be lying if he tried to claim his cock didn’t jump and then shiver with anticipation when Albright’s warm breath fell upon it. He leaned back on his elbows, looking up at the ceiling. The moan he bit back when a wet mouth encircled the head of his cock was entirely sincere, and there wasn’t a man in existence who’d wish he wasn’t the focus of such ministrations. 

The fact was, Albright was good. Very, _very_ good, in fact, and before long Olberic was panting and hissing and fisting his hands in the threadbare covers. He’d never before met a man who’d been able to take all of him at once, and there was certainly something primal and heady about looking down at Cyrus’s pretty face with his nose buried in coarse pubic hair and his luminous eyes gazing back at him.

Erhardt had certainly never sucked him off like that.

Of course, he’d never wanted him to.

But he let himself imagine it now, imagine Erhardt gazing up at him with that submissive adoration, mouth stuffed full of cock, throat bruised with it, turning half blue from lack of breath, and –

Cyrus pulled back to catch a breath, Olberic’s cock dragging along his esophagus all the way, and he cried out sharply. His head fell back, his thighs clenched, his eyes squeezed shut, and he buried his hands in Cyrus’s hair as he came.

He was dimly aware of the other man coughing. He managed to untangle his fingers and pull back even as his orgasm was still subsiding.

He fell back onto the lumpy mattress, panting like he’d just finished his morning workout. Twice. He shuddered, feeling the ginger touches of Albright’s tongue on him, cleaning him gently. It was the kind of service he’d often performed for Erhardt. His face burned.

Then Cyrus was beside him, his breath unsteady and his face flushed. He laughed breathlessly as he buried his face into the crook of Olberic’s neck. His lips were wet and warm with Olberic’s own seed.

“I’m sorry about that,” Olberic said, quietly echoing in his chest. “At the end, I mean.”

“Goodness heavens, I implore you. Don’t be.” Cyrus sighed blissfully, a little shiver running down the length of his body. His voice was distractingly hoarse for obvious and undeniable reasons. “In fact, next time, you can be a little rougher if you’d like. Don’t hold back on my account.”

Next time.

“What about you?” Olberic asked. “And don’t say you finished. I feel you against my leg.”

“Your concern is flattering, but I assure you that I’m perfectly content. There is a certain kind of satisfaction in remaining unfulfilled when a man such as you has been fully serviced, if you could believe such a thing.” He laughed again, having the wherewithal to sound a bit embarrassed.

He very easily could.

“But if it bothers you,” Cyrus added, breathless against his ear and just a little shy. “Next time, ah, I invite you to make use of my arse. You’d never believe just how easy it is to make me climax like that.”

Next time, again.

Well, why not.

There had been one brief, incandescent moment of absolution when he’d released into Cyrus’s mouth, one he’d been chasing with drink, and so much mead was hardly ideal for his health. He needed to be in his best form if he was going to run Erhardt through.

It wasn’t the best sex he’d ever had, but it would serve.

“I’ll have to try that,” he said, and Albright hummed against him.

*

The best sex he’d ever had had come in those last months. When Erhardt had seemed distant and confused one moment, and then demanding and desperate the next. When he’d been rough and unrelenting and had Olberic at his pleasure often enough that he went about his days sore, seed dripping down his inner thighs. When he’d awaken to find Erhardt over him in the dark, certain that he imagined the tears on his face moments before they were kissing with a desperation they’d never before shared.

The benefit of hindsight made him burn with shame. Erhardt had known what was coming, and perhaps if he’d had his eyes open, Olberic would have seen it. But he’d been blind with love and desire, relishing the treatment of a man who was punishing the both of them for what was about to happen.

*

It went like this:

He’d lay on his back. He’d pull Cyrus into his lap, help him straddle his hips, and he’d hiss, watching the other man’s face transform into bliss as he sank down onto his length.

The position helped, made it good for him in the ways he normally liked. Cyrus was slender as a reed, but he was tall and fit and solid. His weight pressing Olberic down against the mattress got his blood surging. The mere sight of Albright’s fine features, pale in the moonlight and locked in pleasure, his name on his lips, well. It was a tonic that went straight to the loins, that was for damned sure. He was only flesh, and his flesh was a captive audience.

But he never recaptured that bright burning moment of total release he’d experienced the first night.

Even now, as Cyrus’s hands slid up his chest, as Cyrus’s willing hole clenched around him, as Cyrus bounced up and down on his hips, he twisted at the end of a tether that refused to give way. It thwarted him, tore at him, something close enough to touch and yet just out of reach. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t enough.

He growled, baring his teeth.

Cyrus opened his eyes. Looked down at him. His lips were parted, his cheeks flushed, his expression confused.

Something snapped, flying off into space.

He seized Cyrus by the hips. Tall or not, fit or not, solid or not, it was the easiest thing in the world to lift him, to sit up, to throw him down against the mattress. Cyrus landed with a soft _oof_ and scrambled to face him, even as Olberic bore down on him, grabbing his wrists, pinning them above his head against the mattress.

“Sir Olberic,” Cyrus gasped.

“Be silent,” Olberic commanded, pushing a knee between Cyrus’s legs.

“Certainly, indubitably, absolutely,” Cyrus babbled, spreading his thighs apart. “Oh, yes, sir.”

Olberic found his entrance with little difficulty, already stretched wide and properly slick from their exertions. He fumbled for just a moment.

He went deep.

Cyrus cried out beneath him, arching upwards, pulling at his wrists. Olberic covered his mouth with his free hand. He pulled out to the tip, and then thrust deep and hard, snarling his pleasure.

“_Hrngh!_” Cyrus’s eyes rolled back in his skull.

Olberic clenched his teeth.

He pulled out and thrusted again. Again. Again. His bollocks slapped against soft skin. He closed his eyes so tight his head ached. The man beneath him writhed and bucked, begging with muffled voice against his hand, and he gave himself permission to imagine. To imagine golden hair spread across the pillow, broad shoulders pulled to steel cords, emerald eyes liquid in the near blackness.

He came with white hot intensity, howling his partner’s name, and collapsed.

In what felt like decades later, he came to register a finger poking at his shoulder. He grunted, blinking away scintillating cobwebs from behind his eyes.

“Sir Olberic,” Albright murmured. “I hate to seem less than fully appreciative of all that just took place, but I am becoming concerned you’ve gone inert in this state, and I do need to make use of the commode.”

All at once, sanity returned. Olberic flushed from toe to crown. He swallowed hard, and it felt as if he had attempted to ingest a boulder.

He rolled over.

“Lovely, thank you kindly.”

He watched Cyrus get down on his hands and knees and fish about for the pot under the bed. Disquiet nagged at his heart. What in the name of all the gods was he doing? This man was a hapless Atlasdam intellectual, not the blackheart traitor who’d torn out his soul and cauterized the wound with flames of ruination.

And yet, those few moments had been…

Cyrus sighed as he found the chamber pot, and Olberic glanced away as he relieved himself. A useless sort of courtesy, that. Closing the barn door once all the cows had gone out.

“I hesitate to bring it up,” Cyrus said, voice spooling out into the dark. “It’s hardly the gentlemanly thing to do, after all. But I feel, in the spirit of honesty, it would be remiss of me not to mention that you called another man’s name. A, ah, _particular_ other man’s name, in fact.”

Olberic’s mouth turned dry. He sat up, pulling his legs toward him to sit lotus-style. _Cyrus_. It still felt heavy on his tongue, an echo of what he was certain he’d uttered at the height of his pleasure.

And yet it seemed far more unlikely that Albright was inventing.

“Erhardt,” he breathed, summoning up the ghost of the man before him, a swirl of scarlet silk and golden hair to stand before him in the dark.

“Just so,” Cyrus said, climbing back up onto the bed. Without awaiting invitation or permission, he climbed into Olberic’s lap, wrapping long legs around him, combing fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. Erhardt’s ghost evaporated. “Not a coincidence, I would think?”

Olberic’s gut curdled. “That seems unlikely, doesn’t it?” he murmured.

“I thought as much. Well. I won’t insult you by saying I hadn’t come to suspect, but still. Still, you have my sympathy, Sir Olberic. It must be a terrible burden indeed, to have been–“

Olberic darted a hand forward, seizing Albright’s wrist as it moved to stroke back his hair once more. “Leave off,” he growled, his voice like distant thunder in his own ears.

Albright scanned his face. His eyes brimmed with concern, a perilously soft emotion that made Olberic want to feel perilously soft things. He saw Erhardt before him, back straight, head high, turned away from him, wielding his traitor’s sword. Felt his heart soar moments before it plummeted and shattered. The weight of that moment, of bearing the memory of it upon his shoulders, had been pressing in on him for so long he wasn’t certain he fully remembered how to breathe.

“Olberic,” Cyrus coaxed. Giving him another chance.

Olberic swallowed. “Leave off,” he repeated, firm in tone and conviction.

After a long moment of weighty silence, Cyrus sighed and relaxed against him, burying his face against his chest. “Well, if you’ll forgive the impertinence, I really ought to commend you on your showing tonight, regardless. I fear I’ll spend a week catching my breath.”

Olberic grunted. “Do I take that to mean you’ll be out of commission while you recover, then?”

“Oh, no. Absolutely not, and perish the thought.” Cyrus’s hands crawled up his sides, eagerly explorative, and enough time must have passed, because Olberic felt his prick stir in response. “Consider me fully at your beck and call, Sir Olberic. Any hour of any day.”

“Good,” Olberic said, and after a moment’s thought, he cupped Albright’s soft, well-formed cheeks in his hands, turning them about, pinning him back against the mattress. “Now, then.” And before the other man could speak, he covered his lips with his own.

Albright gasped into his mouth, delighted, and twined eager arms about his neck.

*

The dancer knew. Not much escaped that one.

She came to walk at his side as twilight fell and they grew near to their inn for the night, swaying close enough to him that an onlooker might think something else was afoot. Her jewellery rang like bells as she moved, and despite their height difference, she fell into perfect stride beside him.

“What is it?” he asked, finally, when the silence grew too loud.

“You and the professor,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “What of it, then?”

“It’s an odd match, is all.” She shook back her hair.

“It’s not a match,” he said. It felt important that much was clear. “Which is why it hasn’t been spoken of. It’s a dalliance, no more, no less.”

“I see. Not friends, then?”

The question took him aback. He furrowed his brow, glaring down at her. She kept her eyes on the road, not so much as glancing in his direction.

“What does it matter?” he asked.

“Bad dalliances can poison good friendships.”

“And what makes you think it’s a bad dalliance?”

She smirked faintly, lips quirking, and her voice slid into cadences that could have set any man aflame… if he were the type to burn for such things, which Olberic was not. “I know sex, Sir Olberic.”

He grunted impatiently. “Is this where you tell me that we want different things and so it will never work?”

“No.” She laughed. “This is where I tell you that you want the same things, and so it will never work.” She sobered. “Which is a silly sort of problem, really, and one that can work itself out fine on its own. It’s really only an issue once you try to solve it in the wrong way.”

“And what is the wrong way, then?” he asked, unable to hide how annoyed he was. She thought she understood.

She didn’t. No one could.

“I think you know,” she said, snapping the tether of his patience.

But as he half-turned to give her a piece, she floated off in a swirl of red silks and auburn hair. He shook his head. No one could deny the woman had the timing of a well-tuned grandfather clock.

He looked back at the road, brows pulled low, her words churning in his craw. Well. Maybe she was right. Maybe he did know. But a man did what he had to in order to make sense of the world, and if there was anything an intellectual like Cyrus Albright would understand, it was that.

*

They curled together in the cramped quiet of Erhardt’s bunk, sheets and covers all around them. Moonlight glimmered off the low hanging eaves, outlined the small wardrobe, footlocker chair, and bedframe, picked out shimmering detail in the stone walls. The brass latch shone dully. Somewhere far away, one of their comrades called the changing of the guard on the battlements.

In the darkness, Erhardt sighed.

Olberic blinked, yawned, and shifted, turning blindly toward his lover like a bat in a black cave. “Is something wrong?”

Erhardt hummed quietly. “Ah, Olberic. I didn’t know you were still awake.”

“Only just. Your woeful exhale barred me at the gates of sleep.”

He meant to pitch the words with levity and affection, but he had ears in his skull and he heard the drag of malaise about them. Cloth rustled as Erhardt turned away from him, moonlight throwing his profile into otherworldly sharpness.

He swallowed. “Erhardt,” he said. “What is it?”

“It’s not a thing. Go back to bed, Olberic.”

“The same not a thing as it’s been for months, now?” Olberic asked, pushing himself up onto one arm. “You’ve scarce been yourself since the last of the snow melted off. Tell me, Erhardt. What has you in such a state?”

“A state,” Erhardt repeated. He caught the hand Olberic had raised to stroke his face, his fingers tightening uncomfortably around his wrist. “Which state is that, Olberic? Because you haven’t seemed to mind the _state_ I’ve been in, from where I’ve taken in the view of it.”

A harsh, sonourous note of peril ran beneath his words. A shiver worked its way down Olberic’s spine, coiling at the base. The air hung heavy and tight. Erhardt’s grip around his wrist grew ever tighter.

“I haven’t,” he said, his voice strained. “I’m only just wondering whence it comes.”

All at once, Erhardt released him. He was breathing heavily, Olberic noticed, and before he could query as to why, he turned away, the bed creaking as he rolled onto his side. “You’d let me do anything to you, wouldn’t you?” he asked. “Anything I could imagine. You make it too easy, Olberic, for an evil man to abuse you.”

“What’s this, now?” Olberic demanded, sitting up. “Evil? Abuse? Grim words, those, for what you’re describing. Is this what has you so outside of yourself, of late? Some uncalled-for apprehension that you’ve been, what, exactly? Too callous with me?”

“Can’t you just leave off?”

“Not while you say such things.”

“Olberic. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave off, won’t you, and go to sleep.”

“I love what you do to me,” Olberic murmured.

His words, the way they uncurled from him like a dark challenge, they changed the tenor of the small room. Erhardt lay on his side for only a moment longer before a wicked, humourless chuckle emanated from him and he straightened.

“Do you?” he asked.

“You know I do.”

“Are you sure about that?” He straddled Olberic’s waist, gazing down at him. His hair fell forward, a golden curtain shutting out the world around them. Olberic felt the heat of his cock, hard and unyielding, against his own. “You may not be able to stomach just how far I might go.” His hands slid up Olberic’s sides, slow and purposeful.

Olberic swallowed, twisting as calloused fingers slid along bunches of muscles, the faint outline of his ribs, setting his skin aflame. “I find myself unconcerned.”

Erhardt’s thumbs brushed over his nipples. His jaw bulged. “Perhaps you should be moreso. What makes you so sure I’m not a cruel blackguard, holding myself back from true brutality?” His hands curved around Olberic’s shoulders, up the sides of his neck.

Olberic reminded himself to breathe. His cock lay rigid and demanding against his stomach, attentive to the harsh words as much as the gentle caresses. He shook his head faintly. “Gods. Is this truly what has you in such anguish, of late? Erhardt, blast you, I need you to understand that, whatever it may say about me, I’ve never done anything but relish your _brutality_.” Just repeating the word felt beyond ludicrous.

“You have a limit,” Erhardt said. “Everyone has a limit.”

He slapped him.

Not hard enough to truly hurt. Certainly not enough to trigger finely honed defensive instincts and risk a reprisal. But enough to sting, to make him gasp in shock and in surprised, ashamed delight.

“Where is your limit, Olberic?” Erhardt asked, and he slapped him again, harder. And again. “How much will you let me humiliate you before you realize just what I really am?” He grasped Olberic’s chin tightly in one hand, pinching his jaw to coax his mouth open.

He moved forward, each knee on either side of Olberic’s shoulders. He gathered his wrists together, pinning them above his head. His cock, hard and heavy, rested like an unfulfilled promise against his throat.

Olberic dipped his head, knowing full well what was about to come and perfectly content to get there early. He dragged his tongue along Erhardt’s smooth, silky cockhead, messy and awkward in their current positions, leaving a trail of saliva.

Erhardt hissed sharply. His head fell back, hair cascading over his shoulders. “You’re not taking this seriously enough.”

“That’s because it’s truly not so very serious.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know that _you’re_ saying a great deal and acting not near enough. Will you leave me waiting all night, Erhardt?”

“Imbecile.” Erhardt snarled, but he’d been successfully goaded. He shifted forward, grabbing hold of the headboard with his free hand, and he lifted his hips and shoved his cock into Olberic’s waiting mouth.

Happily, eagerly, Olberic welcomed him. Erhardt was large, the largest Olberic had ever had, and he savoured the thrill of panic when everything told him _too big_ and he kept going. The soft, spongy head, still wet from his attentions, hit the back of his throat and then kept going. Olberic coughed and gagged before fully opening to the welcome invader. He gasped for breath through his nose as long as he could, until he was cut off from all air and Erhardt’s heavy bollocks rested hot against his chin.

He blinked away moisture from his eyes, gazing up. His heart beat like a stampede in his chest, and he curled his tongue along the bottom of the cock in his mouth. He could feel blood pulsing through a thick vein.

His vision pulled black at the corners.

Above him, as dominant as the golden sun itself, Erhardt shook his head. His throat worked. “Cretin,” he spat. “You think – you damned well think –“

He pulled his hand from the headboard and buried it in Olberic’s hair, fisting hard enough that new tears sprung into his eyes. Erhardt pulled back, and Olberic sucked in a breath just in time for Erhardt to slam forward, uncaring of anything but his pleasure. Olberic gagged again, harder, instinctively fighting against the grip on his wrists. His throat sucked horribly, making ungodly sounds as Erhardt dragged back and pushed deep again, and again.

His own cock throbbed and ached

“Will you choke, Olberic?” Erhardt demanded, his voice harsh and omnipresent, ringing in Olberic’s ears. He laughed bitterly, thrusting again. “Is this how you lose your stomach for me, after all?”

He yanked at his hair, and Olberic moaned, long and low, his eyes sliding shut. Erhardt shuddered as the vibrations coursed through his cock.

A moment later, he pulled off entirely, leaving Olberic panting and desperate and bereft.

“Get on the ground,” he commanded.

His orders were usually delivered with playful flirtation, but nothing but steely resolve touched his voice. Still, dizzy as he was, Olberic wasted no time in obeying, hauling himself up just to drop to the rough planked floor. Thick strings of saliva clung to his chin and drew cobweb strings to the head of Erhardt’s cock. He coughed.

He couldn’t remember ever being so hard.

Erhardt was behind him in moments. “Bend over,” he directed.

Olberic did as he was told, bending over the bed and burying his face in their bunched covers where they’d laid together, peaceful and half asleep, only minutes before. He felt Erhardt’s hand on him a moment before the first slap fell, and he jumped.

“The Unbending Blade of Hornburg,” Erhardt sneered, rocking his body with another blow. “Bare arse in the air, ready and waiting. This is the sword that defends king and kingdom, the greatest knight alive, proud Olberic Eisenberg!”

“Some would -- call you my equal,” Olberic gasped out. His fingers knotted in the sheets; heat flooded his vision. “The Twin Blades, haven’t you – heard? But I’d go further, and call you the b-better. Don’t we – ah! -- go five to three often?”

He braced himself for the next blow, his exposed skin radiating with stinging pain that set all his nerves alight. It didn’t come.

Erhardt’s laugh came out high and desperate, and there was a certain edge to it, a cracking hysteria, a particular sort of…

Olberic turned about, sitting back against the bed. His eyes searched the darkness. In the pale moonlight, he could barely make out his lover’s face, but it wasn’t impossible that he saw what he thought he’d heard -- tears.

He reached out.

“Erhardt. By all the gods. What in the blazes --?”

“Don’t touch me,” Erhardt hissed, voice raw. “Get down, Olberic. Hands and knees. I’ll have you like that, I think, like a dog breeds his bitch.”

And damn him, but he obeyed. He buried his face in the mattress, moaning and begging while Erhardt knelt behind him, forced him open, gripped his hips with bruising strength, and fucked him harder than he ever had before.

Olberic always did wonder if it had made it easier for him, in the end.

A week later, Hornburg had fallen.

*

In the dingy taproom of a tiny waystation not far out of Wellspring, Olberic asked for a flagon of mead. And when he finished drinking it, he requested another, and then another, until he’d built up quite a collection before him on the bar.

It was poor judgement, and he knew as much. If Gustav’s information had been good, there was a fair chance he would meet Erhardt in combat on the morrow. He needed to be at his very best, potent and unimpaired, or there was no small chance that he had come here only to find his own end. He ordered yet another regardless.

It was the rest of them. Their eyes. The merchant had asked him that morning, eyes wide and guileless, if he intended to give Erhardt an opportunity to explain himself. The priestess had walked at his side, delivering an impromptu sermon about the importance of forgiveness. The damned apothecary hadn’t even prevaricated, simply made his thoughts clear, hollered out in the midst of battle when he clearly couldn’t hold it in any longer.

They weren’t all so transparent. The huntress watched him sadly from across the room, her feet up on the table before her and her cat curled about her on the bench. The thief simply avoided him entirely.

A swirl of red silk watched him from the shadows of the stair, sharp, prying green eyes reading him like a damned book.

All of them, thinking they knew him. Thinking they could possibly understand what it felt like, hanging here by a thread at the very edge of everything.

The professor joined him at the bar when no one else had the stomach.

“Hard at work, I see!” the man chirped, damnably friendly considering the circumstances. “Any luck dulling the edge, old boy?”

Olberic grunted noncommittally.

“A flagon for me, if you don’t mind, good sir!” Albright called to the barkeep, and began hauling his chair closer. He accepted the drink offered to him from behind the bar and took his seat. He was close enough that Olberic could hear him breathing.

“I’ve read a not inconsiderable amount of literature on the topic of the this town,” Cyrus said conversationally. He held his flagon in both hands, leaning back and relaxing with it like it was a cup of fine tea. “It’s a location of remarkable interest, if you would believe it! Surrounded by deep warrens of caves and supplied by crystal clear waters sweet as honey from the oasis, it’s become a location of great importance to trade – specifically illegal trade. Do you think that might have been what drew Sir Erhardt to the place? I --”

“No sir,” Olberic interrupted roughly. He heard how rough and raw his voice sounded and stared down into his flagon. There was nothing for it.

“Beg pardon?” Albright asked, all bright-eyed and curious.

Olberic growled. “Erhardt forsook every oath we took upon receiving our knighthoods. He betrayed all that swearing oneself to a worthy liege means. I will not hear him called _sir_.”

“Goodness.” Hell and damnation, Albright sounded merely chagrined. “I’m terribly sorry, Sir Olberic. I’m rather a mess with titles, at times. I’ve called Her Highness Princess Mary by her given name on one too many circumstances when we’ve gotten carried away in our studies, if you could believe such boorishness, hah.”

Olberic scanned the taproom over Cyrus’s head. Fellow travelers glanced away when he met their eyes. The priestess even had the dignity to blush. Not even Primrose Azelhart had the fortitude to meet his gaze for very long, turning away and sashaying up the stairs to the common room above, calling something about getting some sleep over her shoulder.

And still Albright babbled happily away.

“Despite the value of the black market – or perhaps even because of it, if you could believe such a thing! – the area is positively infested with lizardmen. We’ve tangled with their ilk on our path from Sunshade, to be sure, but the reports I’ve studied speak of tribal structures and tactical mastery that would seem quite beyond the dumb beastmen of our encounters! We ought to be prepared to bring arms against them with more than our standard strategems, if they should get in our way whilst we’re pursuring Erhardt, or –“

Olberic stood up. His chair scraped along the floor.

Cyrus blinked up at him. “Off to bed, are we?” he asked. And Olberic thought he glimpsed something in his pretty brown eyes, some emotion he couldn’t name. “I really wouldn’t mind staying up to talk further, if you’re inclined.”

Olberic gripped the back of the chair as he lowered himself to speak into Albright’s ear. “I am highly disinclined,” he rumbled, knuckles turning white. “You ought to know more than anyone. I don’t want to speak about Erhardt.”

Albright coughed delicately, stirring Olberic’s hair. “I only thought I might make you feel–“

“You’re of more use to me when you’re not speaking at all.”

A beat of silence broke by Cyrus sighing against his cheek, warm and sweet. “Sir Olberic,” he said, his voice a bit high. “It’s a common room.”

“And a new moon outside. You want to make me feel something of value? Then meet me by the well in back, if you have the appetite for it.”

He straightened, ignoring all their pitying eyes as he pushed open the front door, striding out into the desert night. He had little doubt that Albright would be along presently.

Issued an invitation like that, _he_ certainly would have.

Sand shifted beneath his boots as he headed away from the coal-burning lanterns that illuminated the façade of the waystation to passing travelers. Out of those bubbles of light, around the corner and in the back, the darkness was inky and absolute. He felt along the border, sensation muffled through his thick leather gloves, seeing nothing but silhouettes and a sky full of stars.

His hand touched thin air and he nestled into a nook in the exterior wall.

A cocoon of black isolation surrounded him. He could barely make out the vague shape of the well, of something that might have been an abandoned cart. Soft, irregular thumps in the distance marked the sound of camels moving about languidly in their enclosures. The air tasted of dry heat, gritty in his teeth, but it felt cold against his exposed skin.

Out of nowhere, a sense of unaccountable, delirious desperation rose up in his throat. His heart began to race; his breath felt squeezed from his lungs. A swirl of wind seemed to bewitch the air before him, and he imagined Erhardt striding out of the night, looking just as he did when Olberic had last seen him. Haughty and comtemptuous, bloody sword in hand, golden hair tossed about on the highland winds.

Olberic watched him, watched him stand there, brilliant in colour despite the blackness that surrounded them. He struggled for breath.

“You ought have told me,” he accused, breathless in the night.

The spectre regarded him dispassionately. A tear of blood dripped from the cut beneath his eye. “About Grynd? About the Black Brotherhood?”

“About all of it,” Olberic said. “All of it. Your hometown, your history, your plans, your _pain_… I had to learn it from some fallen sellswords a decade past instead of from your own mouth.” He gasped for air, hand flying to his chest, pulling his jerkin open. The damned thing was too tight, blast it.

“Well,” the spectre said. “Now you know. What does it change?”

A harsh laugh tore from his throat. He shook his head furiously, baring his teeth. “Nothing,” he gasped. “It changes _nothing_. Do – do you expect me to pity you, Erhardt? Do you expect the heart you tore out and replaced with a stone to break for you? You swore oaths. You had loyalties. A sad story from your boyhood changes none of that. It doesn’t make you less of a traitor.”

The spectre tilted its head to one side, regarding him curiously. “That’s what I would have expected you to say. So then why do you care that I didn’t tell you?”

Pain caught in his throat, his anger coming up against a hard stone wall.

He had no answer.

“Do you want me dead, Olberic? Will that give you peace?”

_You know that it will,_ Olberic went to reply, but the words couldn’t get past the tumor of bile and loathing and regret lodged in his throat. He closed his eyes tightly, gritted his teeth, and willed the cursed apparition away.

Soft hands on his cheeks jerked him back to reality.

His eyelids flew open, but there was no sign of phantom nor shade. Instead, a space of darker black stood before him, combing delicate fingers through his hair, breathing hot, sweet breath into his face, warm and solid and real.

“I really must asseverate, Sir Olberic, that I truly believe conversation is the best remedy to your current infirmity.” Cyrus’s voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, surrounded him, a whisper like silk on skin.

“And I must decline,” Olberic said, managing to force words through the prison of his throat.

“Olberic, consider, won’t you? You _will_ meet Erhardt tomorrow, or else find him gone, his only trail cold and dead. Are you truly prepared for what that entails? You must know, you must, that it won’t be easy.”

_You make it too easy, Olberic._

His primal growl cut through the night air, overpowering Cyrus’s frantic whisperings. He clenched his teeth. “I find your mouth a good deal prettier when it’s set to other tasks.” he ground out.

Cyrus lapsed into silence, his breath quick and hot against Olberic’s face.

How many times had he fallen such anticipatory silence, himself, when Erhardt had made a suggestion that turned his blood to liquid flame? The thought made him burn with such a vile concoction of emotions, the only way to banish it was to find the other man’s hips in the dark and drag them downward.

Cyrus fell to his knees before him, sinking into the soft, cooling sand.

There was barely a half-second of hesitation before long, agile fingers began to tug at the lacings of his breeches. Olberic’s hands found Cyrus’s head, pushing it up hard against his groin.

Cyrus moaned.

Olberic grimaced.

The cool night air rushed in to touch him as Cyrus pulled his cock from his breeches, both hands surrounding it, and Olberic looked down at blackness. He couldn’t see the look on the scholar’s face. He couldn’t see his immense manhood juxtaposed against those delicate features, held in soft hands, guided to willing, wet lips.

But he could imagine.

He pulled off his gloves one by one, tossing them aside, and then fumbled about for the silk ribbon tying back Cyrus’s hair. He pulled it free so that hair cascaded down to his shoulders, running his fingers through the length, ignoring Cyrus’s surprised gasp of pleasure.

Still not long enough, and too fine, but it would do. It would do nicely.

There was no need for a blighted conscience. Surely Albright knew what he’d volunteered for. What this had been about since the first time, when Olberic hadn’t explained that he really preferred to be the one on his knees, that he liked it up the arse at least as much as the other. There were no ambiguities here. There were no misunderstandings.

He imagined Erhardt.

He fisted hands into long, soft hair, drawing a wet, eager mouth down further onto his length. His head falling back. He hissed in pleasure. He fingers caressed the tight hinge of a stubbled jaw, pried open so wide it must ache like the devil to take so much of him at once. He looked down, chin falling onto his heaving chest.

He thought of Erhardt looking up at him.

He gritted his teeth.

He dug his fingers harder into that golden mass of hair, pulling at his scalp and angling his head. His hips snapped sharply forward, gliding his cock past his saliva-slick tongue, bumping against the back of his throat. He’d taken it like this a hundred times or more, flushed with desire and rock hard with pleasure. And Erhardt had stood where he stood now. Looking down on him.

What had he felt?

“Pleasure yourself,” he commanded. A sharp intake of breath through the nose and a rustling of silk was his response, followed by the slow rasp of skin on skin and a quiet moan.

He nodded, satisfied.

“Don’t stop,” he said.

The sound of Cyrus’s – Erhardt’s – hand stroking his own length was electric. Olberic breathed in hard through his nose, teeth clenched tightly together, chin bobbing against his own chest as he drew his head down onto his cock, ignoring the sound of gagging, of gasping, the feeling of a hand on his calf. The rasp of skin against skin quieted.

“Don’t stop,” he reminded, pulling out and shoving back again, even deeper.

The other man whimpered and gasped and obeyed.

There was a difference, between seeing a man go bollocks-deep and _forcing_ him to, and the difference poured fuel onto dangerous flames raging within. He assaulted the other man’s mouth, merciless. When something felt good, when it made him hiss and clench, he did it again. He withdrew to smear thick, ropy saliva over his face, listening to him gasp and cough and shudder while painted with his own drool.

The sound of his accomplice pleasuring himself grew more and more frantic, the sounds he made around a mouth stuffed with cock more violent. The man fairly tremored around him, shuddering head to toe.

Erhardt fought against Olberic’s implacable hands, pulling his own hair for a moment to speak. Olberic let him, sure he knew what was coming. “Ol – Olberic,” he gasped in Albright’s voice, coughing and sputtering. His lips moved against the head of his prick as he spoke. “I can’t… I can’t hold out much longer. This is beyond belief, beyond –“

“Not before me,” Olberic said, and wrested him roughly to the side, earning a sharp cry. He had to be close. “Don’t talk.”

He went down on his own knees, finding Cyrus already burying his face in the sand, arse held high. It was pathetic, and he hated remembering all the times he’d been just like this, offering himself happily. It had all been lies.

“I hope you did a fine enough job getting me ready,” he groaned, and Albright fairly purred his pleasure as Olberic slid into him with naught be the slick of his own saliva for preparation.

Not Albright, he reminded himself. Erhardt.

He found his loose hair again, pulled back harshly, and he fucked him.

Within mere moments, Erhardt was already shaking around him, at the edge of coming apart. Olberic had to be close as well, he had to be. He drove in, pumping in short, steady strokes, feeling his sweet arse clench and suck around him. He was sure he could feel it, just out of reach, and he chased it even as his partner began to gasp and babble.

“I can’t, I can’t keep myself from, ah, I need to stop –“

“Don’t come, don’t talk, and don’t stop.”

Albright keened, high and desperate, but bless the man, he obeyed.

It would only be another moment. Just another few thrusts, a bit further. He was close. He had to be close, close to the apotheosis of those incandescent moments of oblivion. He was chasing the damned sun, but he’d get it, he’d reach that horizon, and when he did – when his climax rocked his body like it never had before, and he felt what Erhardt had felt all those times, by all the gods, he’d understand it, he’d make _sense_ of it, and then… and then…

He clenched his teeth so hard they ached, biting back a howl of rage, of frustration, of defeat, of – of something else, darker and aching and behind his nose, behind his eyes, in his throat, grief and anguish and the kind of cavernous, echoing misery that a man can spend ten years trying to escape and find himself in a place like this and suddenly realize –

He released Cyrus’s hair, falling back, sliding out of him. He covered his own mouth to stymie another cry, but a ghost of it escaped, the sound of a wounded animal chewing its own leg off to escape a trap. His chest heaved. His head ached, his very thoughts and emotions scrambled and tainted by the disease that infected him.

“Sir Olberic.”

Cyrus’s fingers touched his face, brushing across his jaw, his forehead, his cheekbones, his lips.

“Sir Olberic, are you quite all right? Ah, well. Perhaps a bit of a foolish question, that. You’re clearly not.” Careful hands stroked through his hair, soothing against his scalp. His heart thundered around them. “Is it… goodness, I do hope it isn’t an issue of _health_? Ought I… ought I fetch Mister Greengrass?”

“I implore you, no,” Olberic managed.

Cyrus laughed breathlessly. “Ah, there! Good! Dialogue! That’s a start, if nothing else! I, ah, don’t find myself especially more equipped to handle _emotional_ well-being, either, however. And I suspect you’d be equally unimpressed were I to fetch the good Sister?”

Olberic coughed out a chuckle of his own, torn from his middle in a bloody chunk. “Oh, you think she could handle it, do you? A beast of a man like me, sobbing on the ground with his cock out?”

“Now, I say! You’re hardly sobbing, and allow me to state for the record that I think she might surprise you! Though, I suppose, not as much as you might surprise her. The cock out, and all. Best we don’t, then.”

They laughed together weakly, desperate and gulping and strained.

It seemed to break something.

Olberic reached out and found the other man’s wrists, drawing his hands away from his face. He took a deep breath, and it seemed to actually fill his damned lungs for once in his life.

“I’ve treated you wickedly, Albright. I must needs apologize.”

“Nonsense. You may have noticed I rather enjoy wickedness, Sir Olberic, and wicked treatment in particular is a vice of mine.”

He barked a humourless laugh. “Oh, rest assured. I do understand that. And perhaps if I was doing it because we both enjoyed it, it would be something else entirely. No. No, this… from the beginning, from the first time I let myself imagine you as someone else, this has been nothing more than a journey down into a dark hole of self-loathing, which I dragged you along into.”

“I haven’t minded,” Albright insisted, but something had changed minutely in his tone.

He understood, then.

“It has been… difficult, for me. For some time now.” He pushed himself up. “Nigh on ten years, in fact. But it is my own burden. It’s not like me to shove it off onto another. Please, accept my apology.”

He heard Albright struggling to attain his feet beside him, and he sighed, leaning down to offer him help. “Here,” he offered.

A moment later, a hand clasped with his, and he pulled the other man to his feet.

“Thank you,” Cyrus said, and then, after less than a breath’s pause. “I feel I’d be remiss not to point out that you spent those ten years in isolation, Sir Olberic.” He released his fingers and stepped away. “I am hardly the best one to say as much – I prefer to handle my own affairs as well, as I’m sure you’ve noted – but it is not without reason we’ve made common cause with one another, despite disparate goals and destinations. You did choose this, one way or the other. You ought to rely on us.”

“That’s not what this was,” Olberic said, shaking his head. “I’ve used you for my own purposes, and shoddy ones, at that. I won’t argue it.” Suddenly it all seemed so much, so foolish, and so useless. What did it all matter, in the end? It was as Cyrus had said. Tomorrow, he would either look Erhardt in the eye once again, or have to admit he would never do so again.

He ran a hand down his face, and quickly tucked his pathetically wilted prick back into his breeches, pulling the laces brusquely. “Good night, Cyrus.” He’d need to find his gloves in the morning.

He turned away.

“Don’t kill Erhardt tomorrow,” Albright blurted.

He stopped midstride. The hot desert wind ruffled his hair.

Albright took a deep breath. “Yes, I realize, it is entirely out of my purview and I am overstepping whatever boundaries have been drawn in this… relationship. However, since I feel that relationship is now dissolving into an embarrassing footnote in both of our lives, I am willing to make an ass out of myself. Please, allow me to make my case.”

Olberic swallowed hard. He oughtn’t bother. It would change naught, and Cyrus would only be disappointed with him when he stained his blade with Erhardt’s lifeblood after all.

But he did not protest.

“Right, very good, then,” Cyrus said, drawing in a deep breath. “Here it is. You don’t actually want him dead. That’s it. That’s the case! And it’s an airtight one, if I do say so myself.”

“All right,” Olberic rumbled. He would have laughed, if the thought of what was coming didn’t kill all trace of mirth within him. “Is that all, then?”

“Essentially. I considered backing my argument up with evidence, of which I have plenty, and also to support it with weaker subarguments that are equally true. Both seemed to only complicate my fundamental thesis, which is self-evident enough that it benefits from brevity.”

“Cyrus –“

“Please.”

He felt Cyrus against him in the dark, his long, slender body a line of warmth along his side. He turned his face away, ashamed of the awareness of what he’d done to that body, and why.

“When you cross swords with Erhardt tomorrow, you will win. Of that I am fully assured. Call it a deducation. And when you do, please. Just… look into his eyes, won’t you? And ask yourself whether you’d be happier in a world without him, no matter what he did to you.”

He shouldn’t have listened to this plea. It would only make it harder to do what had to be done.

“Good night, Cyrus,” he repeated, quieter. “And truly. I am sorry.”

*

Late nights spent carousing in taverns had never been a part of his life.

And yet that was how he found himself, far enough into his cups that the world had begun to buzz slightly at the corners. The dogs that bayed at his heels had gone blessedly silent, the second-guessing and regret subsiding, leaving him with a confidence and ease with the choices he had made.

The world seemed less cruel, less final, and less merciless with Erhardt drinking beside him.

He charmed the others, of course, with his fine looks and his chivalrous manners. One by one, they excused themselves, but each made sure to bid this ninth drinking partner a farewell, each expressing disappointment that Erhardt couldn’t come with them. They struck out from Wellspring first thing in the morning, each with their own destinations in mind.

“Riverford is a poor idea, Olberic,” Erhardt said, once the last of them had gone and left them alone.

“I won’t change my mind,” Olberic said, and they left it at that.

Erhardt pulled in closer. “The well-dressed one who hung back on the stairs,” he said. “He gives you a certain look. I’d ask you if I ought to be jealous, if I thought I had the right.”

“You don’t,” Olberic replied, and then he sighed and barked a laugh. “But you oughtn’t.”

“Oh? The look says otherwise.”

“The look is a relic and nothing more. The professor and I turned out to be poorly matched, in the end, and there’s nothing more to it. A bad dalliance, as they say.” He swirled mead in the bottom of his flagon, and then shook his head faintly. “He did save your life, though,” he murmured into the cup.

Erhardt didn’t seem to hear him.

“I knew there was something to it,” he said. “You always did have an especial weakness to pretty men, Olberic Eisenberg.”

_I have an especial weakness for you,_ Olberic wanted to reply, but the words caught on his tongue. There was too much unspoken between them, far too much to repair and mend before forging ahead on that old trail. The past weighed too much.

But first the future was, perhaps, not written in stone.

“If I were you, I’d drink to his honour,” Olberic said. “He deserves that much and more.”

“To especially pretty men, then,” Erhardt said, tipping his cup, and it was a toast they could drink together.

  



End file.
